.223 with H335 powder and 52 grain Sierra Matchking

Had a very good evening at the range tonight. Got some good shooting in as explained below and acquired an additional 100 pieces of R-P brass.

Last week I bought some Sierra 52 grain Matchking bullets to give a try.

The first picture below is the workup using H335 powder and R-P brass. After looking at it, I felt the 26.4 grain through 26.8 grain were all equally good.

So I reloaded up some R-P and LC brass. Some with 26.4 grains of H335 and some with 26.8 grains.

The rest of the pictures are my groups. All groups are .56 inches to .75 inches. I had one more group that was .5 inches, but since it was only 3 rounds I didn't include it. All groups shot at 100 yards with a Browning X-bolt Varmint Stalker .223 caliber.

I would be extremely happy with those groups/targets as well. But one thing I have never understood is why guys after 20 grains of powder still load in tenths of grain. I can see perhaps a half grain but after 30 grains, one grain one way or the other really makes no big difference. To illustrate my point a friend of mine loads 225.1 grains of 5010 in his 50 BMG. He thinks that tenth of grain is his magic when in fact 5 grains one way or the other most likely would not make much difference.

The reason I do it, is that I usually only do a workup of about 1.5 grain span. As such I do 1 grain as a confirmation of the previous shot.

What also helped to make it a good evening at the range. There was a guy there who obviously wasn't very experienced shooter, had a rife and scope combo he had bought last year. He said he had it out deer hunting and missed a deer at 50 yards, he also had tried target shooting and could never hit the paper. He was ready to give up and get rid of the rifle.

So anyway, we sent a target down range to 25 yards. i removed the bolt and looked down at the target through the barrel and adjusted the scope. I then told him to give it a try. He hit a 2 inch target the first shot. He was so happy and had a smile from ear to ear. We then sent the target to 50 yards, did 1 shot, made another scope correction and then sent the target to 100 yards. The guy was just ecstatic that he could actually hit something with his rifle.